It’s 8:21 PM on the 6th of July. I’m somewhere in Jocko fighting a paltry 1 acre fire that we lined, contained, and pretty much finished today. It looks like we’ll be going home soon, most likely even tomorrow. There is zero reception up here, so I’m unable to post an entry tonight. Rest assured, dear readers, that I’m truly writing this on the day in question on my phone using my beloved Vesper app.

The first fire of the season is always a struggle because your body is not used to hiking up an arduous mountain while you’re geared up with 45 pounds of weight. We all had to stop every few minutes to simply take a breath and regroup. Once we finished the hike into the fire, though, we all seemed to get used to the physicality of the job. At least I did.

The fire was small. As I said earlier , it was only 1 acre, but it didn’t mean we had nothing to do. Digging line around a 1 acre fire is still digging like around a 1 acre fire. Some of us, which includes me, had to carry a 45 pound bladder bag with us, but as we used it to spray down hotspots and the like, the weight reduced and lightened. Carrying one of these suckers for a few hours inures you to the pain, and you actually get used to it pretty quickly. When mine ran out, I felt so light that I felt like I was going to float away.

My last fire was about ten months ago, and for about 8 of those months, I was in the best shape of my life. It’s been the last few months where I regressed tremendously on all my progress. Either that, or I’m getting older. I should’ve been in better shape, but I wasn’t and I still worked my ass off to get the job done. The rookies, on the other hand…

There’s nothing like a hard day’s work. I feel tired and achy and wonderful. I feel good. My muscles are hurting and I’m all sweaty and stinky and I know I’m going to have a great nights sleep on this very hard and uncomfortable ground. I’m going back to working my ass off when I go home because I know how good I’ll feel afterward. I know how wishy-washy that sounds, but if I can only remember how good I feel right now (and after every workout) I know how much I need to earn that. We’ll see.

All in all, first day of fire season was fun and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season will bring.

Well… here we go again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about food. I’ve been thinking a lot about food because it’s the one area of my life that I’ve always struggled with. I keep thinking that if I simply ate better during the past few months, particularly during my non-workout weeks, I wouldn’t have gained much, if any, weight. If I also ate better during my workout months, I’ve been thinking, I probably wouldn’t have stopped working out since I would’ve felt and looked better than I did. Food is the most important force in the universe, at least to me. My whole life revolves around it, for better or worse.

So I’ve been thinking about my kitchen. During my shopping sprees, I’ve been focusing on my living room/bedroom. I’ve been neglecting my kitchen. I’ve been cooking on a degrading and very frustrating to cook on frying pan for almost three years now. I need a new frying pan, and I want a high quality one, and that’s going to set me back over $100. I’ve been yearning to start grinding my own coffee beans and making different types of coffee, but a good grinder will set me back over $200, and purchasing whole coffee beans will probably cost more than the cheap stuff I buy at Safeway. New gear, new reusables and perishables, more money. I’ve also, for the longest time, wanted to buy a food processor, but again, a good one is expensive, over $100 in this case.

I’ve read a lot of diet and exercise books, and in them, many people keep saying that gear does not matter. Don’t not run because you don’t have the right running shoes and running shorts and you don’t have the right size and color headband or the best route to run in or whatever. Excuses. Just run. The same argument can be made here with me: just cook. I have been just cooking, and I’ve been doing okay, but I want to do more. I want to build up, and that costs money. For the past three years, I’ve cooked, I’m guessing, 95-98% of all of my meals. Now I want a frying pan and a food processor and a better potato peeler and can opener and a handful of other utensils and tools because I want to be more comfortable in the kitchen and not fighting myself.

I want to cook through entire cookbooks, like Julie from that Julie & Julia movie. I want to make sauces and entrées and salads and breakfasts I’ve never made before. I want to know that when I get hurt or I’m just not feeling a workout on any particular day, I can always fall back on my diet and ensure I’m not hurting my health or myself in any way. I don’t want what has happened to me these past few months to happen again, and the best way to do that is to build a foundation that is rock-solid and unimpeachable.

But, again, it all comes down to money. Everything does. I shouldn’t let money impede me from living a healthy and happy life. I simply can’t. So once fire season starts and ends, I’m upgrading my kitchen. It’s a done deal.

I made it to day 300, and it’s America’s birthday. Coincidence? I think… umm… yeah, yeah it is.

This might sound contradictory because I haven’t verbalized it yet, but I’ve been battling with both trying to accept who I am while also trying my best to change certain mental patterns and wirings to help change my thinking and behavior. All this means is that I’ve been sitting on my couch and thinking. I haven’t written anything down, talked to a psychiatrist, or even implemented any of my thoughts in any way. I’ve just been thinking.

Some of the thoughts that have crossed my mind involve my introversion and my full-on embrace of it, my societal hatred of being “polite” and my full-on embrace of my bluntness and crassness, my fear of simply going all-in in everything I do, and battling any sort of societal anxiety and going out into the world to experience it and live it and embrace it. I love staying home, I love watching TV, and I love reading and working out at home, but I have to go out.

I hate small talk and feeling pressure to come up with some brilliant riposte to something someone has said. I hate bros. I hate pretentious and persnickety girls. I hate cowboys or guys who like to wear cowboy hats. I hate that people think I’m cool. It feels like I have something to live up to or something, but I hate it when I’m expecting their inevitable disapproval of me. I hate that I make stupid mistakes. I hate that the things I want cost money. Why can’t I want free things?

I like long, intimate, and intellectual conversations with one person at a time. I like really smart girls. The smarter the better. I like guys who are comfortable not saying anything or feeling beholden to words when silence is perfectly fine. I like people who are authentic and try not to pretend they’re someone else, like cowboys. God I fucking hate cowboys. Also, country music. Twaaaaaaang bullshit. I like my taste in music.

Yes.

I like my imagination. It’s pretty awesome. Also, my awesome vocabulary. I like the friends I can honestly still call my friends. And I like the live I’ve built and am excited for the life I know I can build. Self-actualization.

I’m not going anywhere tonight to watch the fireworks. I haven’t for a few years now, and my life doesn’t feel any less empty. It’s mostly special if you have somebody special to share it with, and I don’t right now. And July 4th isn’t July 4th if I’m not in Chula Vista with my family anyways. Those were the best times anyways.

I haven’t taken a break for 300 days. I have 65 to go. That’s two months. I don’t know what’s going to happen because these last few entries will be hard once I’m out on a fire. If I don’t make it to 365, I’ll be okay with that. I’ve built something memorable, and I’m okay with that. I like that.

In my pursuit toward greatness, I’ve stumbled and battled with many internal conflicts, but a lost battle doesn’t a lost war make. Or something.

The one thing — well three things — the three things that has given my life stability, during both my high and low points, has been my three pillars of living: mind, body, and spirit, aka reading, working out, and writing. Every time I feel lost or anxious or dejected, I always try to steer back my life toward those three pillars. Sometimes I succeed and life is great and I’m happy and life never seems more beautiful. But other times I fail, and when I do, I hate myself for it and I feel sad and depressed and lonely and life never seems more pointless. These three pillars are my lodestar, that star in the sky that always leads me home.

Why have I chosen these three pillars? Because these are the things that have made me happy, and also because they are all interconnected to lead toward one thing, at least to me, and that’s greatness. I don’t know if I mean greatness in the something to prove vein. I don’t give a crap about that. It’s more like I just have this one life. This life is all I have… might as well reach for the stars. I want to know I lived a good life — a great life — when I’m moments before death. I don’t know why, why I have that desire, but I do and I have to live with it.

Life is short. I don’t have much time. Nobody does. When we’re kids, it seems like we have all the time in the world to be whoever we want. There’s a magic that exists in childhood that is severely tested and compromised as we get older. I don’t know if it’s cynicism or complacency or something in between. All I know is that I’ve lost that starry eyed gaze of my younger self, and I need pillars to keep me grounded and focused and these three pillars happen to be it.

I hit play on a 30 minute Insanity workout today, the first time I’ve done that in about a month. I only completed 15 minutes of it. I was out of breath and felt like vomiting and my body jiggled a lot more than I was used to (not to mention I was afraid to take my shirt off, but the heat beat my desire for secrecy). I have to go back to the beginning of my journey, and that’s simply starting. Small steps. Every day, until my routine is back.

What hurt my progress before was the burden of the daily checkmark. I had to write every day and workout 5-6 days a week and read every day because I had to. For 8 months, I did that. I felt the weight on my shoulders, that fear of not being great, and pushed through anyway. I lost my sight of the forest for the trees. I need to reverse that. I need to think in weeks and months and years and not days. This is not something that happens overnight. This is for life, and like I said, life is short and this life’s all I’ve got. Unfortunately, I’m human, and I need to have fun and not be burdened by daily routines. To be great, I have to be smart.

How do I become smart? I don’t know.

I’ve come to a conclusion about myself that is both mind shattering and unbelievable. I need to be hard on myself to be happy. All this let me live life by feeeeeeling my way through my days isn’t working. I need some structure, a high-level of discipline, and the courage to realize that I need to be hard on myself to do what needs to be done, because once I do all that, I’ll be happy. I’ve fallen into old patterns and old behaviors by losing this discipline, and frankly, it’s making me sad and depressed and I’m fed up with it. I need structure and discipline and a path to follow while I live my days. I love that I’m coming to this realization now, when I’m so close to being called out to a fire, a fire that will without a question in the world upheave my life and destroy any sense of normalcy and routine I may or may not have developed. C’est la vie, though.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been afraid to be hard on myself. I thought that by being hard on myself before contributed in some way to my burning out and thus my happiness. I don’t think that’s entirely true anymore. My most happy entries during the life of this blog have been when I’ve accomplished so much, and I wouldn’t have done any of that if I wasn’t hard on myself. I think I might be confusing “hard on myself” with something else. Holding myself accountable to my actions? Ambition? Disclipline? I’m not sure; all I know is that, regardless of how I phrase or what I really mean, I need to be hard on myself and force myself to do what I need to do.

It’s funny, but the couch I bought last week has helped me read more, just like I wanted it to. It’s freaking comfortable sitting or lying on the couch with a book or a magazine in my hands and reading. When I don’t think about comfort, I can think about what I’m reading, and what I’ve been reading has been super interesting. I mention this because a big part of my life that has been missing lately has been reading, and the more I read, when I allow myself to read that much, the more happy I am. The more I read the more I want to read the more I want to work. I haven’t worked out in about three full weeks. I know once I start working out again, the more I want to workout and the better I’ll feel. But since I haven’t been working out, the less well and happy I feel. I’m sure I’ll feel the same way about writing. I’ve been meaning to write some short stories for so long but for one reason or another, I simply haven’t.

It’s time to change all that. It’s time to pull up my big boy pants, wipe those tears from my eyes, castigate the little kid inside of me and let the man loose because I’m fucking tired of being depressed all the time. It sucks and I hate it and if work makes me happy, then I need to work because I need to be happy. The alternative sucks.

I’m still here. No fire yet. I’m a handful of computers away from completing my Windows 8 upgrade at school. I was hoping to finish by this week, and it looks like I will be. That’s good news. Today was also payday, and it’s always good when I have money and I budget it for the next few weeks. Budgeting money makes me happy. Spending budgeted money makes me happy. Spending unbudgeted money doesn’t, and I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. The stuff I bought, though, has made me happy, so you win some, you lose some. My pair of $300 headphones are breaking, and I don’t feel anything about that. Nothing lasts forever. I made spaghetti today. It was not Paleo and not healthy. It was organic, though. I made it with ground turkey. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad nutrition-wise, but I’m not the same person I was a few months ago. I’ve lost who I am. I’m making it all up as I go along. No plans, no goals. I’m in stasis, and I’m sad but also unfeeling most of the time. It’s the feeling of loss that I’m feeling the most. I’m just watching time pass by. My only purpose is going to work and making money. Nobody knows what I do there, and nobody seems to care. As long as shit works, and shit’s gonna be working great, but no one will know until the fall. I wanna go firefighting. I have to change the pillow cases to my pillows if I want to bring them with me. They’re nice pillow cases, and I have a crappier set that I’ve had since freshman year of college. I graduated college over seven years ago. That’s a long time ago. I barely remember high school, and I miss my college friends. I had a friend there I met at one of my jobs, and we were great friends for a few years until she told me she couldn’t be my friend anymore, and we haven’t been. The only thing I did was that I texted her while she had a boyfriend, and the boyfriend was jealous or something. History repeats itself. I can’t seem to stop it or learn my lessons. Now I’m just waiting for life to happen to me. That drive — that fire — I used to have is dormant somewhere. I feel like a robot. A stupid robot that goes against its programming because it doesn’t know any better. It’s the first day of July. I have a few more months of this, if I make it during fire season. I wonder what my first fire will be this year. I hope it’s a good one. A long one. I need a change. I need something different.

I was supposed to workout today, but I didn’t. I planned to, but in the end, I didn’t feel like it. I don’t like what my laziness is doing to my body. It’s making me softer, less energized. I don’t even know if it’s laziness, per se, or a deliberate choice to feel self-pity than to do anything that actually lets me know I’m alive. I’ve been living in a fog that has beclouded my life for the past few months — since late April, to be exact. I asked a girl out then, and I almost lost my job. Hell, I offered my job, but they wouldn’t take it. I met her parents and told them I meant no harm. The dad wanted to kick my ass. I was laughing inside because I knew I would embarrass him. Then a few weeks ago, she came back into my life. She told me never to talk to her again. Then last week I had firefighter training with that girl’s older sister. Small town woes and whatnot. I’m not motivated to do anything anymore, even though I’m slowly hating myself the more I don’t do anything. I’m drowning in TV. I wish I could say there was more to it than that, but there isn’t. I’m even watching TV at work. I was waiting for a phone call today from the division of fire, but they never called me. Maybe there wasn’t any fires started last night, or if there were, they haven’t been discovered yet. Missoula is banning fireworks, that’s how intense the fire danger is around here. I hope to have a busy fire season. I have a lot of debt to pay off. I’m almost done upgrading all the machines to Windows 8 at work. That’s been my life, TV and Windows 8. It’s sad when the best thing that happened to me today was the release of Apple Music. I’m listening to albums I’ve been wishing to listen to for a long time now. This might be worth the $9.99 a month that it’ll cost me September 30th. It’s the best thing to happen to me today because I’m dancing in my seat while I’m writing this. It’s making me feel better. Anything to feel better. I’m also drinking a $9 bottle of Pinot Noir. It’s strong and good. The TV show I’m watching now is Rectify on Netflix. It’s fantastic. It’s my type of show. Watch it. This TV watching has given me a strong desire to buy a TV, and this music listening to has given me a strong desire to buy a good set of speakers. Money money money. I’m glad nobody reads this blog every day. For that small amount of time, I’m alone with these words and that makes me feel good. I’m almost to day 300. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up the streak during fire season because I don’t know if I would want to. We’ll see, right?

Fire season might be starting real early for me. I got a call from a former crew boss today asking me if I was ready to go out. They’re expecting lightning strikes tonight, which may cause something to flare up somewhere and the division just wants to be prepared with a crew if need be. If I do go out this week, it’ll be the earliest I’ve ever gone out. That’s kind of exciting, but also terrifying because I’m not done with my one big project at school, and that’s upgrading every machine to Windows 8.1. I’m close but no there yet.

I’ve always thought I’d do well in solitary confinement. It’s not much different than how I’m living now. I don’t mean that to sound as pitiful as it sounds. It was just a thought with no purpose or anything. Just a thought.

I miss laughing. Is that weird?

I’ve yawned at least two dozen times during this entry that my eyes are watering now. Tears are streaking down my cheek in rivulets of an ersatz existence. I’m wasting my life away, wasting the seconds I’ve been gifted on bullshit. I’m not living to my full potential.

I’m afraid to go out firefighting, but I’m also very eager. It’ll break up my life and provide some much needed novelty. I don’t know if firefighting makes financial sense, but it makes emotional sense. Four years of this. I’ve always told myself I’ll do five fire seasons and I’m done. I might have to cut that down to four. I need to move away from Montana, from California, and toward something else, something new.

I don’t think I’ll ever get married or have kids. I think I’ll become a published writer one day. I think I’m good. But I’m not good at anything else. Not really. I can’t hold friendships. I can barely make new ones. I live my life locked inside four walls and a roof.

I have a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge and another episode of television to watch. Can’t let it go to waste.

I find it really, really tough to write about myself without bitching or writing with a tinge (or a splash) of self-hatred or solipsism. When I give myself almost no time to actually think, shit comes out. That’s just the fact of it. The other truth is that even if I did have all the time in the world to craft a good essay, I probably wouldn’t. I would probably seek out pleasure in all the forms available to me instead of sitting down to write.

I love(d) habits. They helped me lose weight and keep fit, write books, and read hundreds of books. But habits dulled my life. It focused me on work and not on play. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been forgoing habits all together and living life on impulse. If I feel like spending 12 hours watching TV, so be it. If I feel like reading, I’ll read. The only thing I haven’t changed is this blog, where every night I sometimes groan at the fact that I have to write, and other times I have something to get off my chest so I love that I have to write.

I think part of growing up is realizing that you might never be the person you thought you would be as a kid. I thought I’d be married and have kids by now. I thought I would have been working in Hollywood already, making movies and traveling the world. I never thought I’d be a firefighter, but here I am, ready to start my fourth season. I never once thought I’d write a book, and here I am with two. I never thought I’d live in Montana. But I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I repeat the same mistakes sometimes. I say stupid things to people sometimes. My fear prevents me from doing great things sometimes.

Life is short. We all know this. I know this very well. I wish I could be fearless in some aspects of my life, of my personality. Part of it is just accepting who I am and who I want to be. Accepting who I am takes courage, and sometimes I have that courage, but other times I don’t, and lately, I haven’t had that courage. I’m more content locking myself inside my own home than fighting the world, and I want to fight the world.

Shame is a powerful emotion. It has paralyzed me and prevented me from living the life I want. I’m ashamed of many of the mistakes I’ve committed since moving up here three years ago, but you know what? Mistakes are mistakes. The past is in the past. I’m in control of my life and my destiny, and I shouldn’t let anything impede my forward momentum. I have to keep moving my feet, keep fighting, because one day I’m going to close my eyes and never open them again. And before I do, I want to know I expressed myself as fully and as completely as possible.

It’s hot. I’m in shorts I wear no more than once every few years, and the breeze feels good. I hung up the two poster frames I received yesterday and added the posters to them. The place looks good. I’m now seriously considering buying a TV mount and a TV to hang up on my wall, and it will make what I do the most of — watching TV — much more pleasant. That’s also the perfect reason why I shouldn’t get a TV mount and a TV. I’ve been watching waaaay too much TV lately¹ and not enough reading, so my priorities need to change. Maybe I’ll buy a TV in a few months…

I’m still sore but I can feel my body healing. That’s good because I was hoping to reboot my workout regiment on Monday. I’m going to attempt Insanity again, but I’m hoping for a miracle where I find something else to do by then, but I doubt it. I haven’t weighed myself in weeks, and I’m afraid I’ve gained ten pounds or something. I’ve also completely abandoned by Paleo-centric diet, allowing bagels and beans and spaghetti into my diet like it was normal. The summer makes me lazy. Maybe it’s the heat…

It’s funny to think back at how productive I used to be. I used to have every minute of every day scheduled with something to do, and now I’m just doing what I feel like, and it seems like I’m at the same level of happiness regardless. What does that tell me? I don’t know exactly. I can’t trust myself? Maybe there’s more to life than work? More to life than having fun? That I need to strike some fucking balance?

Life is hard, and life is short, and life is ridiculous.